Enkutatash - Ethiopian New Year on September 21, when the daisies bloom and the new year begins with a flatbread and a sheep

Enkutatash is the Ethiopian and Eritrean new year, falling on September 21 in the Ethiopian calendar. It is marked by the meskel daisy blooming in the highlands, a shared new-year meal of injera and spiced stew, and the passing of the year from one generation to the next.

The one-line summary

Ethiopian and Eritrean new year on September 21, with a September 22 reset in leap-year run-ups. Cultural category, standard tier. A public holiday in both countries.

Origin

The Ethiopian calendar counts differently from almost every other calendar in use. It has twelve months of thirty days plus a short thirteenth month of five or six days, and it counts from the Incarnation rather than from any era of political foundation. The result is that the new year would drift steadily earlier through the Gregorian year, so it is reset to September 21 in ordinary years and September 22 in the year before a Gregorian leap year.

The reset keeps the new year sitting at the end of the Ethiopian highland rainy season - the point at which the meher rains stop and the sowing of the main crop begins. The holiday is agricultural before it is calendrical.

When it falls

September 21 in ordinary years, September 22 in the year before a Gregorian leap year - so 2027 and 2031 are the next September 22 new years, with 2026, 2028, 2029, 2030 and 2032 all falling on September 21. The date is highly predictable, which is unusual for a non-Gregorian new year.

How it is observed

The marker of the season is the meskel daisy, Yemane dussia, which blooms in the Ethiopian highlands in the weeks before the new year and is sold in armfuls on the streets. It is the emblem of Enkutatash and shares its name - and its flower - with the September festival of the Finding of the True Cross, which is a separate observance.

Families gather for a shared meal built on injera, the sour spongy flatbread that underlies Ethiopian cooking, served with doro wat, a stew of spiced chicken or beef, and firfir, injera soaked in spiced butter. Where it can be afforded, a sheep or calf is slaughtered for the day, which is the strongest single mark of the observance.

The idea behind the holiday is transmission: the passing of the year, and of the family's knowledge and inheritance, from the old generation to the young. It is the Ethiopian new year in the sense that matters locally - a new season rather than an empty date.

Public status

Enkutatash is a public holiday in both Ethiopia and Eritrea. In Ethiopia it opens the Enkutatash holiday period, which is the country's principal cultural festival and a major domestic travel period as families return to their home regions.

Where it is contested

Enkutatash is not contested. What is worth noting is how often it is misdated: because the Ethiopian calendar is a thirteen-month system, sources that assume a twelve-month year routinely calculate the new year several weeks wrong. The September 21 reset is a deliberate correction built into the calendar, not a coincidence.

Related holidays

Enkutatash shares September withMeskel, the Finding of the True Cross, which uses the same daisy and is the other great Ethiopian festival of the month. Ethiopia also keeps Timkat, the Epiphany festival of January, on its own calendar.

Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica - Ethiopia(the thirteen-month calendar and the September 21 new year).
• Government of Ethiopia(public-holiday status of Enkutatash).
• UNESCO - Intangible Cultural Heritage(documentation of Ethiopian and Eritrean new-year traditions).
• Encyclopaedia Britannica - Injera(the flatbread at the centre of the new-year meal).